[ Academia ] [ Litigation ] [ Regulatory & Policy ] as a Related Elective for those interested in Public Companies : For students interested in employment law, a basic understanding of business principles is key. Federal securities laws and rules provide such basic principles for public companies. Understanding companies' market incentives and the laws regulating their behavior can be useful for both the defense and plaintiff-side attorneys in employment disputes with public companies.
This course covers a broad range of material, including modern financial markets and securities fraud litigation and is a building block for more advanced business law courses. Students are encouraged to take one or more courses covering the scope of federal securities laws.

General course
Description:

Money: Shadow Banking, Dark Financial Matter and the Future of Finance. This course introduces law students to the structure of the shadow banking system and related financial markets. Emphasis is placed on the securitization process, the swaps markets (including credit default swaps, total returns swaps, interest rate, and currency swaps), repo agreements, forwards, futures, and related institutions such as clearing houses and exchanges. The course will consider the role that these markets played in the recent and ongoing financial crisis, their potential implications for future crises, and several of the regulatory initiatives proposed by the Dodd Frank Act. Much of the course will operate through the lens of a series of case studies including the Greek debt crisis, Harvard's loss of $500 million in the swaps market, the AIG bailout, and JPMorgan's loss of $2 billion in its hedge book.

Course Style: A Substantive/Statutory course deals with law, theory, and policy in the context of a particular code or statutory scheme.